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100-Word Wonders: Taxes

Hey. Syawn here.

We’ve decided a picture of me should be posted at the top of the post whenever I’m the one writing it, apparently to make sure everyone understands who’s talking. Fair enough, as some newcomers might otherwise assume that the so-called Inkcaster was capable of writing her own bloody blog posts.

I’ve started a weekly challenge for my author. It’s a good way to keep her on track. This challenge will be to write exactly 100 words on whatever subject I’m wondering about at the time, every Tuesday.

Why Tuesday? she asks. Because today is Tuesday, and I’ll not let her put it off for one more day.

Why whatever subject you’re wondering about? What about subjects I’m wondering about? the author asks, affronted. Because if I let her pick, she would be all day dithering between one musing and another.

Why 100 words precisely? she asks. Because I said so.

Why “taxes”? Yes, partly because she’s blearily weary with filing hers after a long night of writing, but mostly because it’s actually a large motivating factor in my first feature-length novel.

So hogging the spotlight today (or giving my author a rest after her late-night last-minute form-filled ordeal, whichever way you want to look at it,) I will soliloquize upon my own story life difficulties, for two precisely 100 word beats.

*****

Ah, death and taxes—those two absolutely promised things in your life, right?

Not for the thief lords. We are a government to ourselves, and while we risk assassination as much as the next leader over, we tax. We are not taxed. How would it be done? Say nothing of cooked books, how could you first pin us down to quibble over accounts? Everything we do is illegal. If you bust us, we’ll fight, flee, and set up somewhere else while we scheme up plans to make you regret your audacity.

Who could walk into a thief court demanding coin?

*****

Apparently, our new king Vingron has such audacity—as the first monarch in generations to be friendly with the most mistrusted people group in the nation: mages.

Wielding his mages and the fear they command, as they in turn wield their arcane arts, the king turns his eye on revenues never before tapped. My pockets. The pockets of my brothers-in-backstabbing arms. The treasuries of the nation’s lords of thieves.

In the boldest entirely legal heist of the century, he’s going to fleece the filchers. Even me.

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Will Scarlet shakes his head. “The government and their taxes. Same story everywhere you go, isn’t it? ‘Oh, look — those people have money. Not when I’M through!’ Fortunately for the bards of worlds everywhere, not all of us are content to just sit back and let the gold rain upward. Death, taxes, and clever thieves dodging both, for their own good or the peasantry’s: THAT, you can count on.”